breathe you in deep
like salty summer air
like cold winter, just
before it snows -
feel you on my skin
all the way into my lungs.

stuck in a bad dream,
a loop of nightmares of
losing you and leaving you
and I can't wake up.
I watch myself make
the same mistakes
over and over again.
watch myself ruin all
the things that once made
me so happy. watch
myself lay hands on
everything but you.
I just want to wake up
in our bed, in your arms,
while you kiss my face
and tell me everything
is going to be okay.

I think I lost us.
I think I emptied my pockets
for you and in turn,
all you gave me were
heavy stones to line them with.

I think oceans filled between us,
I think I sailed away while you
stood on the shore,
collecting stones and
staring at the horizon
instead.

I think I got tired of asking
for what ought to be offered;
you got tired of being asked
for things you couldn't
ever give.

I think I finally understand what
they mean when they say
people grow
in different directions,
because you remain along the dirt
as brush
and I've grown far up these bricks.

I wish you'd carry my body back
to the river, to the ocean, to the underwater
abyss where it belongs.
my bones have been used as kindling too
many times, my heart the flame,
my blood the life pumping through veins
that have never been under my skin.
my ashes have been spread in graveyards
I never meant to die in and they take
my fingers, they take my hands,
held above the fire for warmth, held
in the candle wax, calling it my rebirth.
I wish you'd give my body back, still
feel the map of me being rewritten by
your fingertips, the weight of you,
the breath that was no longer mine to
take, or mine to give.
the way you anchored my soul, tethered
it to 'home' but you forgot to take it with you
when we left. nothing's been home since.

i have allowed
too many careless hands
to cradle my soft, scarred heart

none so careless
as my own

one wound heals
and another one opens.

I have grown tired
of this cycle.

put the gun in your hands
trusted you to never put your
finger on the trigger
swallowed the love you
fed me, swallowed the lead
when you left me

fell to my knees,
prayed to a god I
don't believe in.
made a church
out of mouths
that have never
tasted the truth.
found faith in
gutter, found
savior in the
******. confessed
my sins in a gas
station bathroom.
the bible was written
on a napkin and
all it says is how
nothing matters
in the end
anyway.

this is how she writes
slanted and sideways
too full of liquor and love
and longing. she smears
it into the walls of her
heart, paints the insides
of her skull - and yet,
everything remains
blackened. the warmth
never laces the cold,
never undoes the laces
of her desperate skin.
her bones crack, fingers
splitting like broken
tree limbs, the floor
looks something like
a ****** scene - decimated
forests and bloodless
bodies of all the boys
whoever used lies to love.
she is an empty house,
abandoned, old and aching.
tiptoes up the stairs of
her broken spine, wondering
how her front-door soul
could have wandered
into such a lost and lonely
place. her bones crack,
the walls shudder. this is
life, this life is an island
and her hands are sinking
ships - hard enough to
wound, soft enough to
never fill. just like her
insides. just like her outsides.

you'll never look at me the way
you used to, that face you had
just for me. I'll never feel your
wrap yourself around me, call me
baby, feel your fingers in my
hair or your lips at my throat.
I won't hear your laugh anymore,
your footsteps down the hall.
we won't ever sneak out in the
middle of the night, won't
cause a ruckus, be the riffraff
mama warned me about. I
won't ever hear you drunkenly
tell me I'm the most beautiful
woman in the world, won't hear
you tell me all over again in
the morning when my hair's a
mess and you kiss me awake.
it's like an open wound, every
moment, and the hardest
part is letting of what we
were and that this is how we
end.

our hearts tick like
wind up toys,
parading up and
down the sidewalks
manipulated by
little fingers,
little laughs.

our lives on stage,
a dollhouse,
on display.

we said goodbye
in riddles, and
I always swore
I'd be the one to leave
that I'd never
watch you go

but my heart is a
wind up toy,
ticking and naive
and my mouth
wears a doll's smile
and god
I loved you.

and when you left,
I stood on the doorstep
watching you round
the corner.
the wind up toys
reached the end
of their turn, our
ceramic hands
clapping til they
crumbled.

I waited for you to
look back, to look
at me once more.

you never did.

an open wound
ankle bone to coffee
table, elbow scraped
against the concrete.
the knife, blade first,
the skin of your legs
the skin of your wrists
your ribs. curled like
lace, drawn on like
sketchpad. the ache
the ache the ache
the scars of never
letting go and the
gnawing, raw
pain of the open
wound you won't
stop picking, you
won't stop scratching
the ache of it the
ache can't forget
can't distract
doesn't stop doesn't
stop doesn't
stop

and the words
whispered over and
over again, the scream
the cry the bang the
whimper

i'm sorry.

to hold on
to let go
you're in
my heart
but you're
still not
home

the lines of time
bleed onto paper
circling back and
forth and back
around to the same
blurry puddle
and they drip
drip
drip
to the floor
blue and gold
and black
holes and
smeared
galaxy
and grey time
slipping into
the ticking fingers
of an old grandfather
clock
and they fold
sometimes into
the bell tower
on the hour every hour
stamped onto
every wrist
glowing in every hand.
it's happening all
at once. you've
lived this second
infinity times before,
checking the time.
are you late?
are you early?
yes.

I'm just a little mess
in a pretty black dress.
you used to like that
about me, loved me once
until the candles were
puddles of wax on the
floor and I was too
burnt out to light you up
anymore.

kiss the
cheek
don't watch
them go
bite your
knuckles
hold in the
cry never
ask them to
stay never
ask them
to stay.

paint my bones red
dress me up like the
wolves, let me reclaim
my wild.

let the lavender in
my blood turn chaos
into quiet storm.

let me be whole
again, the full moon
on a clear night.

the click, the hands, the mouth,
the heavy taste of the liquor
and the heavy weight of the drugs
I never intended to be the grenade
but you never handled me gently
enough to prevent explosion

and in the wake of y(our) carelessness,
the ringing, the shell-shock,
we forgot our names, how
they sounded in each other's mouths.

you tried to hold on, I know, but
my hands hurt too much not to
let go.

guilt inches across
my skin like thousands
of little spider legs -
pour cement
down my throat
and let me choke.
it's all I deserve.

fragile boy
too weak to
shoulder any
blame:

I am not the resting place
for your guilt,
for your regret,
for your shame.

and how dare you
leave me to clean up
your mess.

finally found your portrait
(dorian)
hidden behind your veneer
and your charm
and it is far uglier
than I could have
ever imagined

and all at once
letting you go was the easiest thing
I've ever done.

we waited.
we waited.
we fought like
hell to find
our power,
to live our life
standing up straight.

they cut us down,
died on our knees.
they laughed
at our
black dahlia
smiles,
helped us
tie
our columbian
neck ties -
they wanted us
to look nice,
you know?

let me fall down the well
into chaos, into rebirth, into
wonderland. let me drown,
let me disappear, disintegrate.
I hope you watch me go,
watch my body sink into
grave you dug for me,
baptized in the water you
poisoned. something about
the way you designed my
destruction will always
sign the masterpiece in my hand,
though, and you'll carry the
grief and I'll carry the blame.

blood drips out of the bathtub.
the way they twist your arms,
bend your legs in shapes
they aren't meant to make.

the blood seeps in the floorboards.
they paint your skin
purpleblack,
yellowred,
constellations spiderwebbing across
shoulder blades

down ribs
down hips
down thighs

the blood soaks
into the dirt.

fragile is a matter of opinion.
lace is fragile, but so are bombs.
some fall silently to ruin when
destroyed, some take entire
cities down with them. press
your fingers against my lip,
and maybe i'll crumble. maybe
you won't survive long enough
to know the difference.

it is your
two good hands.
it is your beating heart
threaded into my skin.
it is your greedy mouth
stealing the breath from mine.
it is your violent fingertips,
your vicious palms,
leaving their trace
across every *****
of my body.
it is your two good
hands.

pull my
marionette strings
and I will sing
for my supper,
do as I'm told
at the mercy
of your fingertips.

sometimes
I catch my breath,
sometimes the storm
stops long enough
to see the horizon
again and sometimes
the arms holding me
under are the arms
pulling me up.
the taste of air,
the relief for just a moment
I am not fighting for every
moment of life -

until the undercurrent
catches me, until the sky goes
black all over again
and the water in my lungs
reminds me that the bitter survival
I fight so hard for
is all I really deserve.

my body is an apology,
paying off debts that
I don't owe. my body
is tired, thankless,
an empty pit, a broken
mirror, a monument to all
my sin. a church to save,
but nobody saves me.
they lay me to rest in
my coffin of rot, my pits
of self-loathing and they
leave me there. they
believe I deserve it.

I believe
I deserve it.

i could hate you
i could wish you the worst
(sometimes, i do)
i could summon karma nightly
on your behalf
i could remind you every day
of the ways you harmed me,
permanently altered me

but i'm tired, you know?
tired of the visceral memories of
this night or that night
tired of the way it
suffocates me
even years later
tired of you having so many
pieces of me still, tired
of trying to untangle the love
from the violence
tired of ever knowing any part
of you

mostly, i just hope you look in the mirror
one of these days
and realize the man looking back at you
would finally make good ol' step dad
real ******' proud

home is a hollow,
carved into the carcass
of buildings that once
held life, held love, held light.
hid myself away in the
crevasses; too deep to
really see, close enough
to the surface that they
eyes would still catch
the outside light.
found me in the reflections
and refracted silhouettes.
saw the ghost of the girl
trapped between then and
now, there and here.
tried so hard to coax her
out, save her, set her free.
the thing about saving
ghosts sewn into the darkness
is that they're more siren
than shade, and they'll
drown you in their darkness
before you ever even notice
the thinning of the light.

buried these bones
under miles of regret
pounds of regret

your skin my skin
my mouth your mouth
asking me

don't
let this be
this

this goodbye
thick and heavy
less goodbye

more goodnight
for now (for always)
but you won't

close the door
you'd rather
you watch me go

and i know you
wait for me to
turn back

but i didn't
even kiss you
before i left

needle and thread
can only mend so many wounds,
can only mend
so many tears.

you've watched me, for years,
worrying at all our holes,
repairing them until my
fingers bled,
until my wounds became
too deep for stitches.

not that you'd stitch them up anyways.
never our wounds, and certainly
never mine.

i'm watching the sunset
from the parking lot after work
and all the tendrils of all
the thoughts and feelings
in my head are lost to me,
close enough to see the silhouette,
too far to grasp.
i think of all of our sunsets
and i wish i'd held onto them,
those moments, a little longer.
lived them a little deeper.
we're strangers now, all of that
come and gone so quickly,
too quickly. and that's okay.
or it will be, someday.
the winds have changed,
and i have changed,
but my regret hangs in the
air like the purple in the clouds.
the sunset of you will
set one day and the sunset
will always remind me of you
but you'll become one of those
tendrils, the shape of something
that used to mean something
but unreachable,
like you were always
going to be.

I'm afraid of the brush strokes,
afraid that the pain won't stick,
that it'll stain, that it'll look more
like Rorschach than art.
I'm afraid of the pen to paper,
that the words I want to say
will never ever come out right.
I'm afraid of sewing needles
and spray paint and I'm afraid
of torn canvas and dirt brush
water. I'm afraid that my art
and my poems will turn into
the tangent of my head, the
same strings of words repeated
over and over again and the
same messy lines that link
one hemisphere to the other will
bleed onto the paper, out of
my mouth, and all the paper
and the ink and the paint will
go to waste and all my attempts
will be on the floor and I'll
lay with them and they'll
put a sign on me saying
something like
                 she will be missed.

home isn't
home and permanence
isn't permanent
and i'm still waiting
for the boy
who promised
me forever
to make good
on his word
but he's long gone
making home
in someone else
and i'm still here
feeling like an
unwelcome house
guest in my
own bed.

I have only been held
by careless hands
and loved by
damaged hearts.
my body has become
a graceless wasteland,
an asylum for those
who can't be saved.
I'm tired of this dented
body and this hollow life,
tired of being the water
that holds up ships and
being left to drown in
my own sea. tired of being
the savior, never the
saved. tired of being the
forgiver, tired of being
condemned.

doomed myself
to sisyphus

watching that boulder
roll past me

day after day
year after year

doomed myself
to narcissus

drowning in
the oceans of

my own expectation
for eternity

i am complexes,
i am enigmas

i am nothing i have
designed for myself

i am trapped in the round
tables of beauty and purpose

that have been created in
circle after circle after

circle and someday i yearn
to press my palm

through the surface for
what's beneath

and someday i will
destroy that boulder

and neither will rule
my existence

and i will be free
from that circle

someday.
someday.

we take what we can get
but the well never fills -
water slips through fingers
and again and again
we are left begging
with open, empty hands.

it runs in circles
around my head
can't let go
can't breathe
can't say it
can't take it
the carousel
never stops
turning

i'm trying to walk
on eggshells with feet
still bandaged from
walking on broken glass
and you wonder why
i step so delicately,
why i turn and run
every time they
start to sting
again.

loosen the laces
that tie me to you
  me to us
    me to them
      to anyone.

letting you go has been like pulling hangnails,
like removing limbs. I've learned to live
limbless, nursing ****** fingers.
nobody but me
changes the bandages.

they say time heals all wounds.
time does not heal
all wounds.

open wounds turn scar,
pink and shiny, then the
naked skin of old cuts. but the ache
lingers long after its healed, long
after each and every one of those
cuts has been sewn shut.

every now and then, the nerves sizzle
and your name flashes across my mind
bright and violent like neon against the black
sky of night.

and then you're gone again. just another
scar among many, still the only one that ever
really burns after all this time.

time passes,
another wound opens,
another name
in the flesh, another scar.

I'm so tired of healing wounds.

the burned
hollowed out
husk

the emptiness and
the ache

hands full of bruises
full of blood

gardens don't grow
when you plant them
in ashes.

i don't know what words to write there are so many there aren't enough of them to talk about this tightness in my mind and the weight on my chest there's not enough words in this language to describe the way my entire being seems to twist and twist and twist until i can't tell where is up and what is down and i feel tight and i feel like i'm unraveling and i feel like there's no ground beneath me no sky above me like maybe i'm about to see that white light or maybe i'm gonna burn or maybe just fall into eternal nothingness and that almost seems preferable a nothingness where i don't think anymore i don't feel anything i cease to be i am not and that's fine there's too much air in my lungs but i still can't breathe

rundown rooms
and ***** sheets
the hum of
fluorescence
the flicker
of cheap bulbs
heavy handed
palms i wasn't
ready for

the tv groans
behind us
a sitcom for
a parody of a
romantic moment

you were not
soft or
gentle
or kind -

I felt the greed
in your blood
I felt your need
and I felt
the no die
in my throat.

it hurt
and then
you fell asleep.

wait
flows from my
body like
blood
skin left ragged
asking why
as if my
shallow pulse
needs more than
desperate mouth
to mouth
whispering to
each other what
is the point?
but there's only
silence left
longer than a
lingering *how
are you still
like this?

sometimes i ache to be mild,
clear skies and sunshine.
other times i am at peace
being less a girl and more
a natural disaster.

I've held your bones,
strong as old oaks;
felt your blood
rushing like rivers
beneath the skin.
felt the constellations
of your fingertips
and the hurricane
of your heartbeat.

you are a universe
in flesh.

there are days the sun
captures me, pulls me back
into life and I feel it in every
cell of my body, light and
warmth and life.

and there are days I am
desperate for the ground to
open up and swallow me,
to blink out of existence,
for the planet to turn
without me on it.

the sunny days are few
and far between. I spend
far too much time with my
feet firm on the ground
waiting for departure.

I'm so afraid the time will
come where the sun isn't
enough anymore, and I won't
be enough anymore and
I'll give up waiting
for the departure and
leave by myself.

the trajectory overlaps
suddenly, inexplicably -
asteroid to planet.
the collision is loud,
volatile, permanent
alteration.
the planet continues
to rotate on its axis
a little sideways, never
really recovering
from the explosion, while
the asteroid continues
on its albeit altered,
but never halted,
trajectory.  

we are planets, like this.
turning and turning
in the same universe,
never crossing. it's like a
hand to hold, the moments
before and the moments after
nearly identical: at one time
we hadn't ever touched,
and afterwards it's like we never
did.

but you are still scar.
there's still the ground zero
where we collided, brutally,
beautifully. once, never again.